4 common misconceptions about how drugs get to the US through Mexico and Central America

REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez

Police officers carry packages of 1,224 kilograms of cocaine found in a banana shipment from Ecuador to the US and seized in Puerto Quetzal, at an air-force base in Guatemala City, June 13, 2014.

The issue of illegal narcotics flowing from Latin America into the US through Central America and Mexico has come to the fore in recent months, as policymakers in Washington turn their attention to the US border and the movement across it.

Along with that renewed focus, a number of misconceptions and inaccuracies about what drugs move through Mexico and Central America, who is moving them, and what is being done to stop them have gained traction as well.

This post was originally published by Adam Isacson, senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America.